Contextualising Curriculum Themes for Culturally Diverse Learners Through Indigenous Knowledge Border Crossing (72622)
Session Chair: Anna Catalan
Thursday, 21 September 2023 10:20
Session: Session 1
Room: Nova Icaria
Presentation Type:Oral Presentation
Research shows that the integration of indigenous knowledge (IK) into the teaching of scientific concepts in the school curriculum greatly enhances the learners’ understanding of science, as well as their affective experiences of science. In an era of the ‘decolonizing of the curriculum’ it has become important to contextualize science themes for culturally diverse learners. A reason that is often overlooked for the dismal performance of school learners in science, is the fact that the affective domain of human thinking and reasoning is marginalised in STEM education. By making science more interesting and more relevant for learners, we might see improved performance. This paper disseminates research findings spanning 10 years, highlighting the affordances of epistemological border-crossing in the STEM classroom, by utilising indigenous knowledge to contextualise western curriculum themes to culturally diverse learners. Recent research in neuroscience shows us that experiences with an emotional stamp become committed to long-term memory. Embodied, situated and distributed cognition is used as the theoretical framework in this work. The mixed-methods research also focused on how such border-crossing could enhance self-directed learning. The research findings indicate that such epistemological border-crossing holds affordances in enhancing conceptual understanding, self-directed learning and enhanced affective experiences. However, there are systemic barriers that often prevents such border-crossing. This will be highlighted using third generation Cultural-Historical Activity Theory as a research lens.
Authors:
Josef De Beer, University of the Western Cape, South Africa
About the Presenter(s)
Professor Josef De Beer is a University Professor/Principal Lecturer at University of the Western Cape in South Africa
See this presentation on the full schedule – Thursday Schedule
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